I’m 3 weeks into some new leaves I turned over in my own life and habits I am trying to change.

The result?   I’m convinced that the hardest leadership in the world is “self leadership”.

• Anyone can blame others for a failure.  Owning up to insecurities and shortfalls requires another level of leadership.
• Anyone can convince others to join a vision.  Making the personal sacrifices to own the vision yourself, that’s much harder.
• Anyone can set personal goals.  Making the hard choices that are needed to keep them in check… yeah, that’s self leadership and that my friends, is anything but easy.

My kids are sponges.  Maybe all kids are.  But I’m acutely aware of my own.

They soak up everything around them and everything I do. They watch me on my phone. They watch me drive.  They watch me talk.  They watch me fart.  They watch everything.

Today I took two of my boys to our weekly one-on-one java chat.  TJ before and Tyler after school.  They both had questions and in the process, reminded me… they are soaking up so much.  They are sponges.
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TJ:  He gets a propel water and a breakfast bagel sandwich from the local cafe owner in our community, “Joe”.  I get a hazelnut americano.

Today he asked me, “Are there still Christian Martyrs today?”  

He had read a story about one and it got him thinking.  I said yes and we talked about the blessings of living with religious freedom and how even Christians have been guilty of martyring their “religious enemies” throughout history.  I loved talking life, faith, doubt, and pain with TJ as he wrestles with making faith his own.  I love that he is asking “adult questions” now.

He’s a sponge.
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TYLER:  We always go out after school.  He gets a vanilla chai latte. I again, get a hazelnut americano.  Sometimes we grab a treat. Then we chat.

The first time we met this year, I asked him, “So, what do you want to know?”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, if we’re gonna meet, then you have to come with 1 or 2 questions you want to know each week.  You can ask me anything, but you have to have a question or two.”  I was half joking.  (TJ doesn’t always have one.)

Tyler was not joking.  Ever since then he has brought a question or two to every convo.  Sometimes it’s simple: “What’s your favorite color?” Sometimes it’s silly, “Would you rather pee out your eye or poop out your nose?”

Today he had 3 questions.  They were so sweet they made me want to freeze him at this stage of life.

We’ve been reading some books together written by a couple of friends of mine for middle school students.  I decided to get a jump on the middle school years and dive in early in the intentional convo process.  So, first he read “My Friends“.  Today we started, “My Faith“.

I asked him what questions he had today.  He had written two down on a note pad I had given him and he asked me a third our way home.

1. “Dad, If a friend of mine offers to do something for me and I let them, does that mean I’m using them?”  

He read in the friends book that using your friends was bad and he didn’t want to do it.  He said last week a friend offered to staple some papers for him in class and he let his friend do that.  He wanted to know if that meant he was using his friends.  We talked and decided that he was not and clarified what it meant if he was.

2. “How do you tell your friends about God?”

Here, he had invited some friends to church.  They said they didn’t want to come cuz it was boring and a waste of time.  He told them that his church was not and why.  His friends still told him it sounded boring.  He was kinda hurt. We talked it through.  The question by itself blessed me.

3. “Why do you take your foot off the gas when you shift the car gears?”  

I told you he was watching everything!!!

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My kids are sponges.

Oh Lord, give me grace. Surely I’m screwing this parenting thing up- especially if they are watching EVERYTHING I do.  I’m just not that holy.  Dang.  I need some serious prayer.

For a seminary class last quarter I read some article about leadership vs. management.  I don’t recall where I read it or who wrote it or the real debate the article was about.  But I do recall this two sentence truth that has been mulling around in my head for a while.

• If you don’t have a problem, you don’t need a leader. 
• If you don’t have complexity, you don’t need a manager.

So, I’ve been an apple user since before Apple was well, Apple.  I have never owned a PC… like I went to college with an apple IIGS.

Yup. I’m that old.

Anyway… I now have either an iphone, an ipad, or my macbook pro tethered to me pretty much all the time.  Not to mention a slew of other macs for my wife and kids.  I’ve been told that computers and such were supposed to help us save time, but most of the time, we all know they do the reverse.  So, as part of the brand new me overhaul in 2011, I declared war on that to and decided to try and use them more efficiently to do my job and manage my life.

So, here’s the web based apps I use to keep my mojo goin’:

WWW.ME.COM   I use my mobile me account to:

• upload files that are too big to e-mail and that others can download via a link I send them.
• coordinate my calendar and contacts between my wife and I.  I have several calendars for work stuff, each family member also has their own color and individual calendar too.  They all auto sync to our iphones and laptops and this my friends is how we keep our crazy lives sorted out. 

Ok, I confess.  I watched 40 minutes of Oprah while I was on my elliptical at home last Thursday.  It was all about being the best “you” that you can be.  They had a guy on there talk about personal health. Some guy talked about fashion tips and tricks.  Yeah… I ignored most of that…. but this one guy completely sucked me in.  His name was Peter Walsh… and he’s some kind of space management guru or something.

Anyway, he helped this “normal” American family clean up their home.  His motto was “clutter is defined as random stuff on flat spaces”.  He said flat spaces were the battle ground and that the largest flat space in any house was the floor.  This completely made sense to me.  My family can walk in from church or soccer and in a matter of 60 seconds, completely destroy a house by cluttering up every flat space within eye shot.

It’s truly amazing.  We could win an award.

The longer I ran and listened to this guy, the faster my pace and the more extreme my mental note taking became.  This made TONS OF SENSE to me.  Then he said the kicker.  He said that no matter where he does this clean up routine.  No matter what country or what size the home.  If the home has young children, then there is one universal response of all kids when they walk into a previously cluttered space that is now clean.

Do you know what they do?

THEY DANCE!  They all DANCE.  He said, “We can learn a lot from that.”  I almost had to stop running to process this because I LOVED THAT IMAGE so much.  He went on to say what we all know, and that is that “stuff does not bring us joy.  Simplicity and freedom from stuff does.”

So, right then and there I decided to add this to my new years resolution list.  “I’m declaring war on flat spaces in my life.”

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING:

• Today, with some help from my family, I gutted our kitchen, cleared off all the counter tops, literally emptied every single cabinet, and then got rid of everything we did not use.  It felt great.  I danced. 
• I vowed to refuse to be lazy about setting stuff down on flat spaces like the floor, desks, counters, tables, shelves…. you name it.  
• I’m going all out. One room at a time.